Market adoption of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology has exploded, as users from a wide range of backgrounds and vertical industries have brought this technology into their homes, offices, and increasingly into the public air space. This inflection point has highlighted not only the limitations of earlier-generation systems, but also the changing role that WLAN technology now plays in people's work and lifestyles across the globe. Indeed, WLANs are rapidly changing from convenience networks to business-critical networks. Increasingly users are depending on WLANs to improve the timeliness and productivity of their communications and applications, and in doing so, require greater visibility, security, management, and performance from their network.
Wireless mesh networks have become increasingly popular. A typical wireless mesh network consists of mesh access points (e.g., Cisco® Aironet® mesh access points) and wireless clients. To construct self-forming and self-healing multi-hop wireless mesh networks, each mesh access point finds a route back to a root node. The routing protocols used by the mesh access points generally form a hierarchical routing configuration, according to which backhaul traffic is forwarded between a root node and multiple mesh access points. The IEEE 802.11s standard defines a default routing protocol (Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol, or HWMP), yet allows vendors to operate using alternate protocols. Wireless mesh networks can include one or more mesh access points (mesh APs or MAPs) including a backhaul radio for transmission of traffic across the mesh backhaul between other mesh nodes, and a client radio for wireless client traffic.
Power saving and power management is often an aspect of portable devices, which typically are battery-powered. A wireless device can operate in either doze state or active state. Doze state is sometimes called Power Save (PS) state. Within the active state, there are three power consumption modes: Idle Mode, Receive Mode, and Transmit Mode. In a Power Save state, a wireless device wakes up at beacon frame intervals to determine whether there is any wireless traffic destined for it. If not, the wireless device turns off its radio to save power. Measurements show that devices in the power stave state consume significantly less power than in active state. It has been shown via implementation that allowing devices to go into doze state and only wake up periodically to synchronize and to check for their own wireless can reduce power consumption.